Pigtails? You don’t say…

I read this article on CNN just this morning about your brain and paralysis. Unfortunately, it was too full of technobabbly and ‘maybe possibly someday’s that it was completely unexciting. Sure it will be great when paralyzed people will have new technologies that tap into their brains to help them move again. But the experiment didn’t seem to really prove much to me, so what’s the point of getting excited?

I did find something of note, however – Pigtail Macaques. Wikipedia has failed me on this particular issue, as they did not mention why these fuzzy things have th ‘pigtail’ name. They don’t even have hair tufts, let alone actual ‘tails’ of hair. I guess it could have something to do with the fact that their tails are shorter, but they’re not called ‘lion-tailed macaques’, which is more what they look like.

After careful further research, it is the tail. “Pigtail macaques have an abbreviated tail, less than the length of the body from head to rump, which is often bare or covered only by sparse fur (Rowe 1996; Groves 2001). Pigtail macaques get their popular name from their tails, which are short and carried half-erect so that they somewhat resemble a pig’s tail (Choudhury 2003).” I’ll let you decide: